Run to Earth by M. E. Braddon

M >> M. E. Braddon >> Run to Earth

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42

"But, my dear uncle--Sir Oswald--what have I done that you should treat
me so severely?"

The young man was deadly pale. His uncle's manner had taken him by
surprise; but even in this desperate moment, when he felt that all was
lost, he attempted to assume the aspect of injured innocence.

"What have you done!" cried the baronet, passionately.

"Shall I show you two letters, Reginald Eversleigh--two letters which,
by a strange combination of circumstances, have reached my hands; and
in each of which there is the clue to a shameful story--a cruel and
disgraceful story, of which you are the hero?"

"What letters?"

"You shall read them," replied Sir Oswald. "They are addressed to you,
and have been in your possession; but to so fine a gentleman such
letters were of little importance. Another person, however, thought
them worth preserving, and sent them to me."

The baronet took up two envelopes from the table, and handed them to
his nephew.

At the sight of the address of the uppermost envelope, Reginald
Eversleigh's face grew livid. He looked at the lower, and then returned
both documents to his uncle, with a hand that trembled in spite of
himself.

"I know nothing of the letters," he faltered, huskily.

"You do not!" said his uncle; "then it will be necessary for me to
enlighten you."

Sir Oswald took a letter from one of the envelopes, but before reading
it he looked at his nephew with a grave and mournful countenance, from
which all traces of scorn had vanished.

"Before I heard the history of this letter, I fully believed that, in
spite of all your follies and extravagances, you were at least
honourable and generous-hearted. After hearing the story of this
letter, I knew you to be base and heartless. You say you know nothing
of the letter? Perhaps you will tell me that you have forgotten the
name of the writer. And yet you can scarcely have so soon forgotten
Mary Goodwin."

The young man bent his head. A terrible rage possessed him, for he knew
that one of the darkest secrets of his life had been revealed to his
uncle.

"I will tell you the history of Mary Goodwin," said the baronet, "since
you have so poor a memory. She was the favourite and foster-sister of
Jane Stukely, a noble and beautiful woman, to whom you were engaged.
You met Jane Stukely in London, fell in love with her as it seemed, and
preferred your suit. You were accepted by her--approved by her father.
No alliance could have been more advantageous. I was never better
pleased than when you announced to me your engagement. The influence of
a good wife will cure him of all his follies, I thought, and I shall
yet have reason to be proud of my nephew."

"Spare me, sir, for pity's sake," murmured Reginald, hoarsely.

"When did you spare others, Mr. Reginald Eversleigh? When did you
consider others, if they stood in the way of your base pleasures, your
selfish gratifications? Never! Nor will I spare you. As Jane's engaged
lover, you were invited to Stukely Park. There you saw Mary Goodwin.
Accident threw you across this girl's pathway very often in the course
of your visit; but the time came when you ceased to meet by accident.
There were secret meetings in the park. The poor, weak, deluded girl
could not resist the fascinations of the fine gentleman--who lured her
to destruction by means of lying promises. In due time you left Stukely
Park, unsuspected. Within a few days of your departure, the girl, Mary
Goodwin, disappeared.

"For six months nothing was heard of the missing Mary Goodwin; but at
the end of that time a gentleman, who remembered her in the days of her
beauty and innocence at Stukely Park, recognized the features of Miss
Stukely's _protegee_ in the face of a suicide, whose body was exhibited
in the Morgue at Paris. The girl had been found drowned. The Englishman
paid the charges of a decent funeral, and took back to the Stukelys the
intelligence of their _protegee's_ fate; but no one knew the secret of
her destruction. That secret was, however, suspected by Jane Stukely,
who broke her engagement with you on the strength of the dark
suspicion.

"It was to you she fled when she left Stukely Park--in your
companionship she went abroad, where she passed as your wife, you
assuming a false name--under which you were recognized, nevertheless.
The day came when you grew weary of your victim. When your funds were
exhausted, when the girl's tears and penitence grew troublesome--in the
hour when she was most helpless and miserable, and had most need of
your pity and protection, you abandoned her, leaving her alone in
Paris, with a few pounds to pay for her journey home, if she should
have courage to go back to the friends who had sheltered her. In this
hour of abandonment and shame, she chose death rather than such an
ordeal, and drowned herself."

"I give you my honour, Sir Oswald, I meant to act liberally. I
meant,"--the young man interrupted; but his uncle did not notice the
interruption.

"I will read you this wretched girl's letter," continued the baronet;
"it is her last, and was left at the hotel where you deserted her, and
whence it was forwarded to you. It is a very simple letter; but it
bears in every line the testimony of a broken heart:--

"'_You have left me, Reginald, and in so doing have proved to me most
fully that the love you once felt for me has indeed perished. For the
sake of that love I have sacrificed every principle and broken every
tie. I have disgraced the name of an honest family, and have betrayed
the dearest and kindest friend who ever protected a poor girl. And now
you leave me, and tell me to return to my old friends, who will no
doubt forgive me, you say, and shelter me in this bitter time of my
disgrace. Oh, Reginald, do you know me so little that you think I could
go back, could lift my eyes once more to the dear faces that used to
smile upon me, but which now would turn from me with loathing and
aversion? You know that I cannot go back. You leave me in this great
city, so strange and unknown to me, and you do not care to ask yourself
any questions as to my probable fate. Shall I tell you what I am going
to do, Reginald? You, who were once so fond and passionate a lover--
you, whom I have seen kneeling at my feet, humbly born and penniless
though I was--it is only right that you should know the fate of your
abandoned mistress. When I have finished this letter it will be dark--
the shadows are closing in already, and I can scarcely see to write. I
shall creep quietly from the house, and shall make my way over to that
river which I have crossed so often, seated by your side in a carriage.
Once on the bridge, under cover of the blessed darkness, all my
troubles will be ended; you will be burdened with me no longer, and I
shall not cost you even the ten-pound note which you so generously left
for me, and which I shall enclose in this letter. Forgive me if there
is some bitterness in my heart. I try to forgive you--I do forgive you!
May a merciful heaven pardon my sins, as I pardon your desertion of
me_! M.G.'"

There was a pause after the reading of the letter--a silence which Mr.
Eversleigh did not attempt to break. "The second letter I need
scarcely read to you," said the baronet; "it is from a young man whom
you were pleased to patronize some twelve months back--a young man in a
banking office, aspiring and ambitious, whose chief weakness was the
desire to penetrate the mystic circle of fashionable society. You were
good enough to indulge that weakness at your own price, and for your
own profit. You initiated the banker's clerk into the mysteries of
card-playing and billiards. You won money of him--more than he had to
lose; and after being the kindest and most indulgent of friends, you
became all at once a stern and pitiless creditor. You threatened the
bank-clerk with disgrace if he did not pay his losses. He wrote you
pleading letters; but you laughed to scorn his prayers for mercy, and
at last, maddened by shame, he helped himself to the money entrusted to
him by his employers, in order to pay you. Discovery came, as discovery
always does come, sooner or later, in these cases, and your friend and
victim was transported. Before leaving England he wrote you a letter,
imploring you to have some compassion on his widowed mother, whom his
disgrace had deprived of all support. I wonder how much heed you took
of that letter, Mr. Eversleigh? I wonder what you did towards the
consolation of the helpless and afflicted woman who owed her
misfortunes to you?"

The young officer dared not lift his eyes to his uncle's face; the
consciousness of guilt rendered him powerless to utter a word in his
defence.

"I have little more to say to you," resumed the baronet. "I have loved
you as a man rarely loves his nephew. I have loved you for the sake of
the brother who died in my arms, and for the sake of one who was even
dearer to me than that only brother--for the sake of the woman whom we
both loved, and who made her choice between us--choosing the younger
and poorer brother, and retaining to her dying day the affection and
esteem of the elder. I loved your mother, Reginald Eversleigh, and when
she died, within one short year of her husband's death, I swore that
her only child should be as dear to me as a son. I have kept that
promise. Few parents can find patience to forgive such follies as I
have forgiven. But my endurance is exhausted; my affection has been
worn out by your heartlessness: henceforward we are strangers."

"You cannot mean this, sir?" murmured Reginald Eversleigh.

There was a terrible fear at his heart--an inward conviction that his
uncle was in earnest.

"My solicitors will furnish you with all particulars of the deed I
spoke of," said Sir Oswald, without noticing his nephew's appealing
tones. "That deed will secure to you two hundred a year. You have a
soldier's career before you, and you are young enough to redeem the
past--at any rate, in the eyes of the world, if not before the sight of
heaven. If you find your regiment too expensive for your altered means,
I would recommend you to exchange into the line. And now, Mr.
Eversleigh, I wish you good morning."

"But, Sir Oswald--uncle--my dear uncle--you cannot surely cast me off
thus coldly--you--"

The baronet rang the bell.

"The door--for Mr. Eversleigh," he said to the servant who answered his
summons.

The young man rose, looking at his kinsman with an incredulous gaze.
He could not believe that all his hopes were utterly ruined; that he
was, indeed, cast off with a pittance which to him seemed positively
despicable.

But there was no hope to be derived from Sir Oswald's face. A mask of
stone could not have been more inflexible.

"Good morning, sir," said Reginald, in accents that were tremulous with
suppressed rage.

He could say no more, for the servant was in attendance, and he could
not humiliate himself before the man who had been wont to respect him
as Sir Oswald Eversleigh's heir. He took up his hat and cane, bowed to
the baronet, and left the room.

Once beyond the doors of his uncle's mansion, Reginald Eversleigh
abandoned himself to the rage that possessed him.

"He shall repent this," he muttered. "Yes; powerful as he is, he shall
repent having used his power. As if I had not suffered enough already;
as if I had not been haunted perpetually by that girl's pale,
reproachful face, ever since the fatal hour in which I abandoned her.
But those letters; how could they have fallen into my uncle's hands?
That scoundrel, Laston, must have stolen them, in revenge for his
dismissal."

He went to the loneliest part of the Green Park, and, stretched at full
length upon a bench, abandoned himself to gloomy reflections, with his
face hidden by his folded arms.

For hours he lay thus, while the bleak March winds whistled loud and
shrill in the leafless trees above his head--while the cold, gray light
of the sunless day faded into the shadows of evening. It was past seven
o'clock, and the lamps in Piccadilly shone brightly, when he rose,
chilled to the bone, and walked away from the park.

"And I am to consider myself rich--with my pay and fifty pounds a
quarter," he muttered, with a bitter laugh; "and if I find a crack
cavalry regiment too expensive, I am to exchange into the line--turn
foot-soldier, and face the scornful looks of all my old acquaintances.
No, no, Sir Oswald Eversleigh; you have brought me up as a gentleman,
and a gentleman I will remain to the end of the chapter, let who will
pay the cost. It may seem easy to cast me off, Sir Oswald; but we have
not done with each other yet."

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV.

OUT OF THE DEPTHS.

After dismissing his nephew, Sir Oswald Eversleigh abandoned himself
for some time to gloomy thought. The trial had been a very bitter one;
but at length, arousing himself from that gloomy reverie, he said
aloud, "Thank Heaven it is over; my resolution did not break down, and
the link is broken."

Sir Oswald had made his arrangements for leaving London that afternoon,
on the first stage of his journey to Raynham Castle. There were few
railroads six-and-twenty years ago, and the baronet was in the habit of
travelling in his own carriage, with post-horses. The journey from
London to the far north of Yorkshire was, therefore, a long one,
occupying two or three days.

Sir Oswald left town an hour after his interview with Reginald
Eversleigh.

It was ten o'clock when he alighted for the first time in a large,
bustling town on the great northern road. He had changed horses several
times since leaving London, and had accomplished a considerable
distance within the five hours. He put up at the principal hotel, where
he intended to remain for the night. From the windows of his rooms was
to be seen the broad, open market-place, which to-night was brilliantly
lighted, and thronged with people. Sir Oswald looked with surprise at
the bustling scene, as one of the waiters drew the curtains before the
long windows.

"Your town seems busy to-night," he said.

"Yes, sir; there has been a fair, sir--our spring fair, sir--a cattle
fair, sir. Perhaps you'd rather not have the curtains drawn, sir. You
may like to look out of the window after dinner, sir."

"Look out of the window?--oh, dear no! Close the curtains by all
means."

The waiter wondered at the gentleman's bad taste, and withdrew to
hasten the well-known guest's dinner.

It was long past eleven, and Sir Oswald was sitting brooding before the
fire, when he was startled from his reverie by the sound of a woman's
voice singing in the market-place below. The streets had been for some
time deserted, the shops closed, the lights extinguished, except a few
street-lamps, flickering feebly here and there. All was quiet, and the
voice of the street ballad-singer sounded full and clear in the
stillness.

Sir Oswald Eversleigh was in no humour to listen to street-singers. It
must needs be some voice very far removed from common voices which
could awaken him from his gloomy abstraction.

It was, indeed, an uncommon voice, such a voice as one rarely hears
beyond the walls of the Italian opera-house--such a voice as is not
often heard even within those walls. Full, clear, and rich, the
melodious accents sent a thrill to the innermost heart of the listener.

The song which the vagrant was singing was the simplest of ballads. It
was "Auld Robin Gray."

While he sat by the fire, listening to that familiar ballad, Sir Oswald
Eversleigh forgot his sorrow and indignation--forgot his nephew's
baseness, forgot everything, except the voice of the woman singing in
the deserted market-place below the windows.

He went to one of the windows, and drew back the curtain. The night was
cold and boisterous; but a full moon was shining in a clear sky, and
every object in the broad street was visible in that penetrating light.

The windows of Sir Oswald's sitting-room opened upon a balcony. He
lifted the sash, and stepped out into the chill night air. He saw the
figure of a woman moving a way from the pavement before the hotel very
slowly, with a languid, uncertain step. Presently he saw her totter and
pause, as if scarcely able to proceed. Then she moved unsteadily
onwards for a few paces, and at last sank down upon a door-step, with
the helpless motion of utter exhaustion.

He did not stop to watch, longer from the balcony. He went back to his
room, snatched up his hat, and hurried down stairs. They were beginning
to close the establishment for the night, and the waiters stared as Sir
Oswald passed them on his way to the street.

In the market-place nothing was stirring. The baronet could see the
dark figure of the woman still in the same attitude into which he had
seen her sink when she fell exhausted on the door-step, half-sitting,
half-lying on the stone.

Sir Oswald hurried to the spot where the woman had sunk down, and bent
over her. Her arms were folded on the stone, her head lying on her
folded arms.

"Why are you lying there, my good girl?" asked Sir Oswald, gently.

Something in the slender figure told him that the ballad-singer was
young, though he could not see her face.

She lifted her head slowly, with a languid action, and looked up at the
speaker.

"Where else should I go?" she asked, in bitter tones.

"Have you no home?"

"Home!" echoed the girl. "I have never had what gentlemen like you call
a home."

"But where are you going to-night?"

"To the fields--to some empty barn, if I can find one with a door
unfastened, into which I may creep. I have been singing all day, and
have not earned money enough to pay for a lodging."

The full moon shone broad and clear upon the girl's face. Looking at
her by that silvery light, Sir Oswald saw that she was very beautiful.

"Have you been long leading this miserable life?" Sir Oswald asked her
presently.

"My life has been one long misery," answered the ballad-singer.

"How long have you been singing in the streets?"

"I have been singing about the country for two years; not always in the
streets, for some time I was in a company of show-people; but the
mistress of the show treated me badly, and I left her. Since then I
have been wandering about from place to place, singing in the streets
on market-days, and singing at fairs."

The girl said all this in a dull, mechanical way, as if she were
accustomed to be called on to render an account of herself.

"And before you took to this kind of life," said the baronet, strangely
interested in this vagrant girl; "how did you get your living before
then?"

"I lived with my father," answered the girl, in an altered tone. "Have
you finished your questions?"

She shuddered slightly, and rose from her crouching attitude. The moon
still shone upon her face, intensifying its deathlike pallor.

"See," said her unknown questioner, "here are a couple of sovereigns.
You need not wander into the open country to look for an empty barn.
You can procure shelter at some respectable inn. Or stay, it is close
upon midnight: you might find it difficult to get admitted to any
respectable house at such an hour. You had better come with me to my
hotel yonder, the 'Star'--the landlady is a kind-hearted creature, and
will see you comfortably lodged. Come!"

The girl stood before Sir Oswald, shivering in the bleak wind, with a
thin black shawl wrapped tightly around her, and her dark brown hair
blown away from her face by that bitter March wind. She looked at him
with unutterable surprise in her countenance.

"You are very good," she said; "no one of your class ever before
stepped out of his way to help me. Poor people have been kind to me--
often--very often. You are very good."

There was more of astonishment than pleasure in the girl's tone. It
seemed as if she cared very little about her own fate, and that her
chief feeling was surprise at the goodness of this fine gentleman.

"Do not speak of that," said Sir Oswald, gently; "I am anxious to get
you a decent shelter for the night, but that is a very small favour. I
happen to be something of a musician, and I have been much struck by
the beauty of your voice. I may be able to put you in the way of making
good use of your voice."

"Of my voice!"

The girl echoed the phrase as if it had no meaning to her.

"Come," said her benefactor, "you are weary, and ill, perhaps. You look
terribly pale. Come to the hotel, and I will place you in the
landlady's charge."

He walked on, and the girl walked by his side, very slowly, as if she
had scarcely sufficient strength to carry her even that short distance.

There was something strange in the circumstance of Sir Oswald's meeting
with this girl. There was something strange in the sudden interest
which she had aroused in him--the eager desire which he felt to learn
her previous history.

The mistress of the "Star Hotel" was somewhat surprised when one of the
waiters summoned her to the hall, where the street-singer was standing
by Sir Oswald's side; but she was too clever a woman to express her
astonishment. Sir Oswald was one of her most influential patrons, and
Sir Oswald's custom was worth a great deal. It was, therefore, scarcely
possible that such a man could do wrong.

"I found this poor girl in an exhausted state in the street just now,"
said Sir Oswald. "She is quite friendless, and has no shelter for the
night, though she seems above the mendicant class. Will you put her
somewhere, and see that she is taken good care of, my dear Mrs. Willet?
In the morning I may be able to think of some plan for placing her in a
more respectable position."

Mrs. Willet promised that the girl should be taken care of, and made
thoroughly comfortable. "Poor young thing," said the landlady, "she
looks dreadfully pale and ill, and I'm sure she'll be none the worse
for a nice little bit of supper. Come with me, my dear."

The girl obeyed; but on the threshold of the hall she turned and spoke
to Sir Oswald.

"I thank you," she said; "I thank you with all my heart and soul for
your goodness. I have never met with such kindness before."

"The world must have been very hard for you, my poor child," he
replied, "if such small kindness touches you so deeply. Come to me to-
morrow morning, and we will talk of your future life. Goodnight!"

"Good night, sir, and God bless you!"

The baronet went slowly and thoughtfully up the broad staircase, on his
way to his rooms.

Sir Oswald Eversleigh passed the night of his sojourn at the 'Star' in
broken slumbers. The events of the preceding day haunted him
perpetually in his sleep, acting themselves over and over again in his
brain. Sometimes he was with his nephew, and the young man was pleading
with him in an agony of selfish terror; sometimes he was standing in
the market-place, with the ghost-like figure of the vagrant ballad-
singer by his side.

When he arose in the morning, Sir Oswald resolved to dismiss all
thought of his nephew. His strange adventure of the previous night had
exercised a very powerful influence upon his mind; and it was upon that
adventure he meditated while he breakfasted.

"I have seen a landscape, which had no special charm in broad daylight,
transformed into a glimpse of paradise by the magic of the moon," he
mused as he lingered over his breakfast. "Perhaps this girl is a very
ordinary creature after all--a mere street wanderer, coarse and
vulgar."

But Sir Oswald stopped himself, remembering the refined tones of the
voice which he had heard last night--the perfect self-possession of the
girl's manner.

"No," he exclaimed, "she is neither coarse nor vulgar; she is no common
street ballad-singer. Whatever she is, or whoever she is, there is a
mystery around and about her--a mystery which it shall be my business
to fathom."

When he had breakfasted, Sir Oswald Eversleigh sent for the ballad-
singer.

"Be good enough to tell the young person that if she feels herself
sufficiently rested and refreshed, I should like much to have a few
minutes' conversation with her," said the baronet to the head-waiter.

In a few minutes the waiter returned, and ushered in the girl. Sir
Oswald turned to look at her, possessed by a curiosity which was
utterly unwarranted by the circumstances. It was not the first time in
his life that he had stepped aside from his pathway to perform an act
of charity; but it certainly was the first time he had ever felt so
absorbing an interest in the object of his benevolence.

The girl's beauty had been no delusion engendered of the moonlight.
Standing before him, in the broad sunlight, she seemed even yet more
beautiful, for her loveliness was more fully visible.

The ballad-singer betrayed no signs of embarrassment under Sir Oswald's
searching gaze. She stood before her benefactor with calm grace; and
there was something almost akin to pride in her attitude. Her garments
were threadbare and shabby: yet on her they did not appear the garments
of a vagrant. Her dress was of some rusty black stuff, patched and
mended in a dozen places; but it fitted her neatly, and a clean linen
collar surrounded her slender throat, which was almost as white as the
linen. Her waving brown hair was drawn away from her face in thick
bands, revealing the small, rosy-tinted ear. The dark brown of that
magnificent hair contrasted with the ivory white of a complexion which
was only relieved by transient blushes of faint rose-colour, that came
and went with emotion or excitement.